Sarah Piatt and Mary Boykin Chestnut both came from very similar backgrounds, though as they grew up and married, they both went in very separate directions. Both were born into slaveholding families in the south, but Sarah moved north with him to Washington D.C., where her ideas on slavery took a turn; she began to support the northerners. However as Mary Chestnut grew older she stayed in the south, and had a plantation and a life filled with slavery and confederate ideology. As the Civil War went into full swing, this obviously allowed them to have very different opinions about the war and their views on slavery and politics. An example of this is their views on General Lee. Mary Chestnut wrote a Diary called "A Diary from Dixie", where she describes the scene in her life when she, her friends, and confederate soldiers have just found news of General Lee's death. "I saw it reflected in Mary Darby's face before I heard him speak. She staggered to the table, sat down, and wept allowed. Mr. Clay's eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself Mary shrieked 'Now we belong to negroes and Yankees!....How different from ours of them is their estimate of us. How contradictory is their attitude toward us'". Clearly Mary and her friends are startled by the news of General Lee, and as we see Mary's thoughts unfold we notice her anxiety; she is scared of what will become of them, and she can't bare to handle the fact that one of the biggest and best leaders of the south was dead. Mr. Clay's tearing eyes show us the importance of General Lee in the south and how much they depended on him--this is much different than it was in the north, and only a southerner would relate emotionally to that scene. Sarah Piatt had opposite views of General Lee and actually blames him for all the lives taken and destruction that occured during the war. This is not surprising for someone who believes in the north; but very interesting to see the difference of opinion between these two women. In "Arlington Heights", she describes the war and gives many depictions of dead men in fields, moving masses of men covered in blood, and at the end describes one single person "And there is one who comes alone and stands at his dim fireless hearth--chill'd and opprest by something he has summon'd to his lands, while the weird pallor of its many hands points at his rusted sword in his own breast" Here she is describing all the dead men blaming General Lee for their death by describing pale and deathly hands pointing at the sword worn by a man. She also describes in the stanza before how at night there are cries coming from mothers and daughters to the dead, while he stands alone. There are many northerners who would relate with Sarah on that as opposed to Mary. These two women had different opinions of General Lee obviously because of the war but there is more to see than just that. These women wanted different things out of their life; it shows us that they both had different dreams in America and were looking for something different. Mary wanted the dream for herself and her family, but Sarah wanted the dream for all of America, slaves and freemen alike. From today's standpoint, Sarah's is much more convincing and I think that even southerners today would agree with Sarah Piatt more solely because slavery is no longer a value in this country and hasn't been for quite some time.